Sheep's Clothing by Gary Lewis (dark books to read TXT) 📗

"Then I'll drive," she said with conviction as she rose to her feet. "You're tired."

Once in her mom's minivan, twenty minutes of high beams shining between the dark forested hills along empty roads found them approaching Sarah's driveway. "It's a good thing her grass is so high," Janice said, carefully pulling in with a slow right turn. "It helps guide me."

David smiled. "Don't let Sarah hear you say that."

The nighttime breeze slightly waved the tall grass, revealing tall strips of blueish green hues that blanketed Sarah's front yard with a thick mat of vegetation. The windows were all black. Her front light was off above the dark, deadwood porch that welcomed whatever doom awaited just beyond.

She saw David's eyes turn serious as he leaned to the windshield, glaring around Sarah's yard. "Park it right here in case we need to get out fast," he said.

"Okay." Janice calmly put the van in park and David cracked the passenger door, looking intently at Sarah's porch.

He turned to her. "Maybe we should call her to come out," he said.

"I think we should go inside," she told David with a long-drawn look into the center of his large, black pupils.

After a few moments of peering around their unseen surroundings, listening for every sneaking scurry that could barely be heard, Janice opened her door and walked around the front of the van. The darkness that loomed behind her neck was far more menacing than anything she could see, no matter which way she turned.

David's door opened with a squeak as he stepped out before lightly closing it. As he walked to her side, her fear of what was behind vanished, only to be replaced by the dread of what was ahead.

They stepped toward Sarah's dark front porch. With David at her side, Janice swiftly slung her feet through the grass until he stepped ahead and they walked up the steps on the side of the porch before pausing at the door. She eyed the cracked, peeling, pale blue paint that coated the exterior walls of Sarah’s blacked out, silently still home. It looks so dead.

David raised his right hand timidly, turning his head to face Janice. She stood on the top step, beside the outer wall of the house, just out of sight from the front door. "Guess I'll knock," he said.

The door yanked open with a sudden squeak. "What the hell took you so long?" Sarah's voice shrieked from inside with a shrill that Janice's skin tried hard to reject. "Where the hell have you been anyway?"

"I wasn't home," David said, hands up as if to avoid being shot. "Jan drove me."

Sarah's head shot out of the doorway. Wide eyes of shock aimed her open mouth at Janice as she stood silently at the top of the stairs. "Are you fucking kidding me?" She aimed her malicious stare back at David before withdrawing back inside with a slam of the door.

Janice remained quiet as she studied the darkness that surrounded them. It concealed anything that might lurk between the hefty bushes that stretched out over the tall grass. She became more cautious as the front door had now become a wall where they could be cornered. David's arms swung about as he shouted through the door. "We came as soon as you called!" A vulnerable sensation traveled along the back of Janice's neck that went down the skin of her shoulders with a chilling rush that spotted her arms with goosebumps.

"David?" Janice said, turning to face the yard as she backed slowly in his direction on top of the creaking porch.

"It's okay. I'm here." David's voice came from behind her shoulder as he grasped the side of her arm.

The inky shadows that loomed along the line of foliage at the edge of Sarah's yard drifted in the darkness. David's grip became tighter as they now stood side by side, stepping back an inch at a time.

The door flung open again to Sarah's angry face. "Just get inside already," she said with a reluctant sternness while she scooped at the air, waving them inside.

After rushing into her pitch dark living room, they spread several feet apart. The sound of a clicking light switch came from beside the front door as Janice stepped closer to the dining area.

"Don't you think I would've tried that by now?" Sarah scolded David.

"Sorry, Sarah," Janice said. "I wanted to make sure David got here okay."

The dim glow of moonlight that entered the edge of the window glimmered across Sarah's face as Janice saw her tighten her lips with hatefully pressed eyes at David.

"What the hell happened?" he asked.

"Something huge set off the trap outside. Now it's shorted and I have it hardwired to the main breaker. It'll just trip back off if we flip it on."

"So how do we fix that?" David asked.

"Someone would have to go out there and unhook the drop cords where they're plugged together in the middle of the backyard." Sarah's voice began to break apart as Janice faintly saw her set her forehead in her hand.

"Out there?" David asked. "Didn't really think this through, did you?" His frustration blared in his tone.

"Fuck you, David." Sarah's voice from the living room didn't sound any more distant, despite Janice feeling her way around to the kitchen through the pitch-black house. Their shouts continued raising above one another in matching volume as Janice finally reached the dim moonlight that shown through the glass pane on the backdoor, shining onto an open panel just beside it. There's the breaker box. 

Janice could still hear them fighting as she turned the doorknob and eased the backdoor open, letting the barely audible sound of the gentle wind inside. One foot at a time, she felt her way from the porch to the cinder block steps that descended into the grass. She grabbed the thick rubber cord that dangled from the porch rail and gave the wall end a hard tug. "That's not going anywhere," she said. Cord in hand, she slid her fingers down its length,